Goals for Sweater Season
October will always be one of my favorite months. In the south, it's the first month that actually feels like fall, and though I am not a fan of the pumpkin spice latte trend, I certainly favor sweater season. October is also a reminder of my wedding anniversary, one of my favorite vacations, taking my initial team to Pure Barre training, and being hired by Pure Barre corporate. I tend to get a bit reflective during seasons that hold a lot of memories. They make me sentimental as I look back on what God has taught me and how much my life has changed from year to year, especially during the last two. A common thread throughout most of the memories I listed was big life change. Those moments were all encompassed by great joy and a greater sense of purpose, as I leapt into a new stage.
Last week, I was challenged by my Bible study to look for areas where I'm not trusting God with my life or my plans. The sad answer that popped into my head was "most areas" - my marriage, my career, my overall contentment. It's so easy to reflect on past memories with all the warm and fuzzy feelings and wish that your current state could feel as "special" or worthwhile as the moments you're remembering. When you get stuck in the day-to-day grind, it can be easy to forget that every day is a chance to form a long lasting memory: one that can serve as a benchmark for the changes you've made and the ones you've yet to uncover.
Shauna Niequist summed it up perfectly in her new book Present over Perfect when she said, "I'm trusting my ability to hustle more than God's ability to heal." To create the kind of experience that begets a new favorite memory, I typically look to myself and my work-ethic to produce change. But doing so creates an urgency in my soul that often breeds anxiety and a feeling of working towards a finish line that I can't see. Hustling towards an ambiguous end goal doesn't make me content; it makes me frantic, and you can't take time to reflect on the good that's happened when you can't acknowledge any of the current good things. This fall, I want to rediscover what it means to trust God's ability to heal the areas of my life where I'm not leaning into Him and His plan.